For more than four decades, WUSF and Classical WSMR host and music director Russell Gant’s voice greeted listeners like an old friend: warm and unhurried. He made you believe, if only for a few minutes, that the world outside the music he was about to play could wait.

Now in his early 60s, Gant has recently retired, closing the curtain on a career that the birth of spanned vinyl, CDs, streaming, and just about every form of listener-supported fundraising imaginable. He signed off for the final time on June 18, after 42 years with the station.

“So far so good,” he says of retirement. “Played some golf. Going to Orlando today—my daughter’s graduating from UCF. Then I’ll come up with a daily routine.”

Gant lives in Dade City and plans on “taking things slow. We’ll play it by ear,” he says. “I just want to take it easy and enjoy family.”

Gant started working at WUSF in 1983, while he was still a student at the University of South Florida, where he studied music. Then he stayed. Listeners across the Tampa Bay and Sarasota region came to rely on his weekday and weekend programming, his calm intelligence and on-point timing. At Classical WSMR, he hosted the Morning Show, Midday Mozart and countless hours of locally programmed classical music, becoming one of the most enduring voices in Florida radio.

But alas, he was also human—a fact made most memorable by a particularly funny on-air blooper. “I was doing a fund drive and talking about people increasing their monthly donations by a dollar or two to count toward our challenge,” he says. “It came out wrong. I thanked a listener and said, ‘Thank you for upping your pledge. Now won’t you up yours?’”

The team had to cut to music. “I was laughing so hard,” he says. “Now it’s an inside joke for eternity.”

Though his radio life revolved around Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, Gant's off-air musical tastes may surprise some people. “I’m an over-the-top Elton John fan,” he says. “Ever since I was a kid. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Funeral for a Friend.” He’s seen John live 28 times, including one of the final “Million Dollar Piano” performances in Las Vegas. “I bumped into his husband in the Caesars Palace gift shop and got a selfie with my daughter,” he says.

If he was stranded on a desert island, Gant says his top choice of albums would change by the day. “One day I’d say Jupiter Symphony by Mozart, and another day it might be Beethoven’s No. 9. It depends so much on your mood.”

After more than 40 years of structuring his life in five-minute musical intervals, weather breaks, live broadcasts and pledge drives, Gant says he’s looking forward to a pause. He might travel. He might not. The plan, for now, is not to have a plan.

WSMR has not yet announced his successor, though the station’s lineup of voices will carry the programming forward for now. As for Gant, he exits the airwaves the same way he lived in them—attuned to the value of good timing.